If you’re working in the content industry in Texas you probably have a friend or associate who’s spent some time working out of state to help crew a project that was set up there by a production company looking to take advantage of incentive programs offered by a state film commission or other entity. New Mexico and Louisiana are the two states I hear mentioned most often.

HB 1634, a bill originally introduced by Texas House of Representatives member Dawnna Dukes, seeks to help reverse this trend by providing fresh incentives for content developers to choose Texas as their production location.

The bill, also known as the Moving Image Industry Incentive Program would offer incentives up to the following:

- $2 million for a film;
- $2.5 million for a television program;
- $200,000 for a commercial or series of commercials; or
- $250,000 for a digital interactive media production

According to the House Committee Report version of the bill, in order to qualify for these incentives:

- a production company must generate a minimum of $10 million in in-state spending for a film or television program; or $500,000 in in-state spending for a commercial, or series of commercials, or digital interactive media production.

- at least 70 percent of the production crew, actors, and extras for a moving image project must be Texas residents.

- at least 80 percent of the moving image project must be filmed in Texas.

There’s other criteria as well so be sure and study the bill if your interest runs deeper. But that’s the gist of it, and there’s a lot for content developers to like. Kudos to Representative Dukes and the other representatives now co-sponsoring and supporting the bill.

The Moving Image Industry Incentive Program is on the legislative calendar for a vote on April 3rd.

Related link: The Texas legislature offers this tool to help you find out who your state representative is.

update 04.12.07: Yesterday the Moving Image Industry Incentive Program was passed to engrossment by the Texas House and had a nonrecord vote recorded in journal. These were new terms to me, so thankfully the Texas House Research Organization puts out the handy How A Bill Becomes Law report. A couple excerpts from that document help explain the current status of the bill.

Regarding passage to engrossment:

The (TX) Constitution requires that a bill be read before the House on three separate days in order to be passed…First reading occurs when the bill caption is read and the bill is referred to committee. Second reading gives the House its first chance to debate and vote on the bill…Bills passed on second reading usually are set for third reading on the next day

Lately I’ve noticed some publishers of online content using a c within parentheses (c) when they want to copyright their work or give proper credit to another’s copyrighted work. This use of the (c) is understandable since there is no © button on any of our keyboards and no quick fix is currently provided in many of the blogging platforms.

So what’s a conscientious online publisher to do?

The good news is that the solution is pretty straight forward. Rather than typing (c) in your publishing platform, you can type in the following six characters where you want your © symbol placed:

That is the HTML code for the © sign. When your blog post is published it will turn that into this –

©.

And if that solution doesn’t appeal to you for some reason, you can always simply copy and paste an already rendered © symbol from another post, like this one.

©

When looking into how to copyright your work also be sure and consider publishing your work under a Creative Commons license. If you go that increasingly popular route you can communicate your copyright terms with one of their images.

The Center for the Study of Public Domain, part of the Duke Law School, has come up with a novel way to explore issues facing content developers like intellectual property, copyright and fair use — a comic book entitled Tales from the Public Domain: BOUND BY LAW.

You can view the free digital Flash version issued under a Creative Commons license.

BTW – the $10,000 ringtone referred to in the title of this post has to do with an experience the documentary filmmakers for Mad Hot Ballroom apparently went through to license the music in their film. According to an interview with Amy Sewell posted in Stay Free, a ringtone of Gonna Fly Now went off in a scene in the film and EMI asked for $10,000 to clear it for the movie. They didn’t ultimately get that much, but the fact that they asked for it is notable.

More good knowledge shared in that interview about an aspect of licensing songs known as the Most Favored Nation Clause.